I welcome your paper in every way, and particularly
its obvious improvement. At last the literary side is
beginning to be well organised! The next job is the business side.
You must not leave the question of subscribers “
unpublished” either: you should announce their number,
otherwise you cannot rise from the small circle level to
full-scale organisation, from a private enterprise to a collective
one.

Nor can I pass over an obvious mistake in No. 22, where
side by side with the correct resolution from the Vyborg
workers (on Buryanov) you have, without comment from
the editors, a longer and disgustingly double-faced
resolution from the Zurich
group.[2]Pravda’s word is law; its
silence tends to confuse the workers; its abstention sows
bewilderment.

With Buryanov one must be “as wise as a serpent”,
but the editorial board has departed from such wisdom.
We praise him only for leaving the liquidators, and not
at all for lone-wolf “independence”. In this the liquidators
are right, and there is no greater danger for a politician in
the struggle than to take up the wrong position.

Yet the Zurich group support Buryanov in his erroneous,
false, double-faced position! And we give them a platform—
what for? Knowing that the Zurich group are a minority
abroad! Knowing that we cannot make all the groups
abroad express their stand in Pravda!

Buryanov should be made to understand and feel the
falseness of his attitude. You have left the liquidators?
Good.

What then? It is time to make a choice. We will not
support you in double-dealing (the pendulum game). The
liquidators are attacking you as an “independent
Social-Democrat”: they are right, and we shall not defend you.
Here is a reasonable period for you, here is assistance
during that period (tacit, with speeches, etc.), but no more
than that. Either you make your choice (within 2 or 4
weeks)—or you get no more help.

That is the only way to act. Otherwise in the immediate
future (both at the Vienna Congress and
earlier[3])
Buryanov’s stand will do us harm, and people will be justified
in telling us that we are supporting an “independent”.

The editorial board must find an occasion to say
(1) that
the Vyborg workers are right, not the Zurich group;
(2)
that, apart from a section of those abroad (Zurich), no one
in Russia has approved or will approve “independence”.

P.S. Within a month, Buryanov will say: the Zurich
group supported me, and only the workers of Vyborg
condemned me! And we shall not have had general mass
support for the Vyborg group. But that is just what we need
most now.

If you “give Buryanov a free hand” and your support,
he will consolidate his position against us, and that would
be a crime against the will of the majority of the workers
and against the “Marxist whole”.

P.S. Could you please send No. 2 of Nasha Zarya as
quickly as possible, when it comes out, for a reply to L.
Martov in Prosveshcheniye?

P.P.S. Please show this letter to the paper’s contributors
who are in the R.S.D.L. Duma group.

Can you send me Milyukov’s article in Russkiye
Vedomosti where he speaks about the tactics of refusing to
believe in a peaceable outcome?

About the paper, I repeat that the improvement is
tremendous. (The same comments from everywhere.) All the
best. Laissez-nous écrire plus souvent l’opinion et les
directives (les commandes même) du
rédacteur![1]

Notes

[1]Have them inform us more frequently of the editor’s opinion
and directives (nay, his orders)!—Ed.

[2]The resolution of a group of workers in the Vyborg district, “On
the Withdrawal of Comrade Buryanov from the Seven”, and the
“Open Letter to A. F. Buryanov”, signed by the Zurich group
for the promotion of the R.S.D.L.P.

In their resolution the Vyborg workers welcomed Buryanov’s
withdrawal from the Seven, as fresh evidence of its political
bankruptcy, but censured his neutralist stand as being incorrect.
The Zurich group, mostly Mensheviks, assessed this as a major
step towards the unification of the two Social-Democratic groups
in the Duma. The two documents appeared in Put Pravdy No. 22,
February 26, 1914.

[3]A congress of the Second International set for Vienna in 1914 and
a congress of the R.S.D.L.P. then being prepared. Neither took
place because of the outbreak of the war.